


While We Live

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alien Character(s), Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Culture, Aliens, Backstory, Culture Shock, Escape, Families of Choice, Family, Gen, Non-Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Trek Women, Women Being Awesome, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-10
Updated: 2011-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 15:06:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1432891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaila was born to one of the many domestic gangs in fief to House Sharad, on the Northwest Continent of Orion Prime.  She grew up in and out of the main compound kitchens and storerooms, screaming through the grounds and back corridors with her gang siblings, only occasionally corralled into schooling.  Children were too young to be useful, so as long as gang brats kept out of the way of high House folk, nobody much cared what they got up to.</p><p>AKA, Gaila's early life on Orion Prime, her escape to the Federation, and the reason she joined Starfleet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While We Live

**Author's Note:**

> This is a stitched-together version of four failed attempts to remix [Talented Tongue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/301680), a scorching hot Gaila/Uhura ficlet by MelayneSeahawk. As you can see, what I wrote had approximately nothing to do with her story -- which is why I don't count this as a remix -- and is also a _horrifically_ compressed version of what wants to be the first third of a novel. That said, I still think there are some interesting ideas in my scribbles.

The thing was, if Gaila had known more about xenopsychology, comparative cultural studies, and evolutionary biology instead of aiming all her focus on computers, physics, and mechanical engineering, she wouldn't have started treating Nyota as a sister. At least not a human sister -- Terrans were so _weird_ about familial relationships, always putting up walls called "incest" and "taboo" and "oh my god, you are fucking _sick_ , that's disgusting, I should have you _arrested_." (Fortunately the Federation believed in free speech, and that particular waste of space got himself arrested shortly thereafter for starting a bar fight, but still. Terrans were crazy.)

Anyway. Gaila wasn't much for the softer sciences, and while she'd memorized the basic rules of "no sex in public" and "ask first or it's a crime," she hadn't realized yet just how different most member species of the Federation were from humans.

Take Vulcans, for example. They actually _pair-bonded_. Like they were scaliat, or some other kind of migratory bird, the ones who might merge into giant flocks near the equator but always returned, two by two by two, to their own little private nesting grounds near the poles to breed, and only ever took another partner if the first were dead.

 _So_ weird.

Terrans weren't quite that incomprehensible, but their similarities to humans were even worse in a way. They kept fooling Gaila into thinking of them as just wrongly-colored humans... and then they went and talked about fidelity and romance, or nuclear families and paternal inheritance laws, and Gaila tripped over her assumptions yet again, realizing she was lost in a sea of aliens who thought she needed to change to fit them, not vice versa.

Even Nyota, who did study interspecies communication and culture clashes as her life's work, made that mistake. It was probably inevitable. Gaila was sure that, if dropped into a House network for training among humans, Nyota would adapt a lot faster and more smoothly than Gaila was adapting to Earth, but it was hard to lose your assumptions when you were still surrounded by people of your own species, who all thought those assumptions were basic truths about the universe.

So yeah. Terrans were weird. And if Gaila had known that in her fingertips instead of just her head, she would have negotiated an out-net tie with Nyota -- a friendship, as Terrans called it -- instead of using her as the basis for a new in-net, a little gang to make Starfleet Academy into a home away from home. She would have kept her hands off.

But she didn't. Gaila brought Nyota into her family.

And for whatever reason, Nyota let her.

\---------------

Gaila was born to one of the many domestic gangs in fief to House Sharad, on the Northwest Continent of Orion Prime. She grew up in and out of the main compound kitchens and storerooms, screaming through the grounds and back corridors with her gang siblings, only occasionally corralled into schooling. Children were too young to be useful, so as long as gang brats kept out of the way of high House folk, nobody much cared what they got up to.

That relative freedom ended when she reached nine years. A man from a taskmaker gang ran Gaila and the gang siblings near her age through the standard aptitude tests, and sent her to a House-owned nanotech factory for training. Her gang brother Kuran went with her -- House Sharad held to the old ways and never traded males on their own. Both children were grateful for the link to their old home, though of course they worked to fit themselves into the networks of the tech gang that ran the factory under lackadaisical high House supervision.

Gaila learned her way around math, physics, electrical engineering, and computer programming. Kuran leaned more toward mechanical engineering and design. As they grew, they formed an in-net with three other trainees -- Ailaud and Pervesh, two girls with the green-black hair common on the Great Continent, and Rilta, a skinny boy with bluish skin that spoke of South Continent blood -- and learned each others' bodies and moods with the same concentration they gave to learning their trades. They had complimentary skills as well as complimentary personalities, and with luck, they might all be traded together when the girls reached maturity.

Luck was with them. After eight years, they were traded as a unit to House Galos-Met, nominally as part of the entourage of a high House daughter venturing forth into the world, but mostly to settle a debt. They were assigned to a shipyard and set to work building and improving starships, ranging from tiny couriers to heavy freighters, with an occasional luxury yacht or light battle cruiser for variety. The shipyard was large enough for the resident tech gang to fission into four sub-gangs, though by and large people were professional enough not to let personal networks interfere with work assignments.

Gaila's in-net spent a five-day sussing out the lay of the group, touching politely and being as open and neutral as they could, before they made a formal overture to the smallest sub-gang. The gang mothers gave a conditional acceptance for a smallmonth, to see how the nets would mingle. Everything went well, and the five slipped smoothly into their new home.

They might have dissolved the in-net in favor of building alliances with their new gang siblings and their gang cousins in the other sub-gangs, but new ties seemed less vital than they would for people traded singly. All five built overlapping out-nets, of course, but they continued to lean on each other first and foremost, as in-net partners should.

\---------------

They didn't escape alone. No human would ever voluntarily cut herself (or himself) off from a network, not unless she'd been traumatized beyond belief. If you didn't have an in-net to know you down to your first dream and last breath, if you didn't have a gang or House to help you make a place in the world, if you didn't have other Houses around to take your children when it was time for them to leave home, then you weren't a person. You were only a shell, existing instead of living.

The plan belonged to the gang mothers and a four-person in-net of high House folk -- two women, two men -- who had romantic notions about freedom and equality. They assigned Gaila's sub-gang to refit a massive luxury yacht, transforming palatial suites into standard cabins, adding hidden armaments, and juicing the engines until the ship was twice as fast as before. When the chosen day came, Gaila's sub-gang, a handful of cousins from the other sub-gangs, a few out-net members from the yard's domestic gang, and the high House in-net with their entourage all boarded the ship under pretext of a combined inspection tour and impromptu in-net party... and fled, lifting straight up from the shipyard and streaking past the first orbital stations before anyone knew what had happened.

They lost twelve people when a lucky shot pierced the hull in one compartment, but over a hundred of them made it safely to Federation space. Their gamble was a success. The equally risky gamble of assuming the high House folk could put their bodies to prove their words and assimilate into the gang also seemed to succeed -- slowly and awkwardly, to be sure, but apparently freedom was more than just a game to them.

The adults found work fairly soon -- tech skills were useful anywhere in the galaxy -- but economic security wasn't enough. There were children among them. Sooner or later, they'd have to leave home and find new Houses. The trouble was that only a bare handful of other humans had reached the Federation, and most of them lived in tiny in-net groups, not even large enough to be proper gangs. (No. Proper _Houses_. Free people held their own fealty. Nobody in the Federation could own another sentient being.)

Nobody in Gaila's new House -- House Amet, they called it, after their gambles -- was willing to trust those tiny Federation Houses without personal contact. And they needed to know more about the Federation. They needed to gather strength and influence, stockpile money and weapons, until they could go back to Orion Prime and the other Congeries worlds and find more people who dreamed of breaking free.

There were dozens of open worlds. With enough people, they could settle one and make it new, build an example of how humans _should_ live so the Houses on Orion Prime could never again truthfully say that their way was the only one that worked.

The House mothers called meetings every few days to discuss options until everyone agreed on who needed to go where and do what.

Gaila's in-net were the youngest of the adults, lowest in status and presumably most flexible. They were all sent on long-term one-person assignments. Ailaud joined a surveying crew, learning how to rate the prospects of new planets. Kuran joined a planetscaping company, which tailored new biospheres to accept selected elements of foreign ecologies and thus sustain colonies. Rilta applied to a university to study Federation law. Pervesh applied to a different university to study economics.

Gaila enlisted in Starfleet.

For the first time in her life, she left home alone.

\---------------

The trip to Earth and the two weeks of orientation for off-planet students were the longest Gaila had ever spent without another human around. The various aliens of the Federation meant well and tried hard, and the programs in Gaila's pocket translator were excellent, but aliens weren't humans and translators only caught words, not all the other layers of speech. She'd thought adapting would be easy, since building a new home away from Orion Prime had been easy, but she hadn't realized how lonely it would be without a sister or brother to touch and scent and color the world in all the subliminal shades of _home_. 

Nobody in the Federation shared her background and understood her jokes. Nobody even talked right, using scent and touch to fill in the gaps left by words and posture alone.

Nobody until Nyota.

Gaila was sitting at her console in her new dormitory room, composing yet another letter to the sisters and brothers who had defected along with her, when a strange female cleared her throat behind her and said, in proper speech, "My name is Nyota, of House Uhura, and I greet you in all openness."

Gaila turned to see a Terran female walk through the doorway and sling a cloth carryall onto the second bed, claiming it as her space. Nyota had brown skin and long black hair bound up into a swinging tail, and she walked like high House folk, mistress of all she surveyed. But she'd greeted Gaila in _openness_ , and her smile and the friendly tilt of her shoulders agreed with her words. So did the little flash of interest in her eyes when Gaila stood and stretched the kinks out of her back.

Why not accept her offer? Nobody had made aliens into family before, but Gaila was here to create ties with the Federation's power structure. What better way than building a new in-net?

"My name is Gaila of House Amet. Let us be open together," Gaila said, completing the formula. She stepped forward and drew Nyota into a loose embrace, getting to know her scent and heat, learning the touch of her skin. They weren't quite right -- a shade too acrid, a bit too hot, at once too smooth and oddly covered in tiny fine hairs -- but close enough. And Nyota hugged her in return, backing her words with the truth of her body.

Good enough.

The rest could wait for later.

**Author's Note:**

> If I were expanding this, it would take at least twenty thousand words to get Gaila from birth to Starfleet Academy. (In all honesty, fifty thousand would be a better bet -- I run long -- but let me preserve my illusions, okay?) It would also be more like an original science fiction novel than standard fanfiction. I do not have the time or the motivation to start another novel when I have so many unfinished projects and am so bad at time management, but I do love this world-building, and maybe someday... well, as the New York Lottery says, you never know. *wry*
> 
> If you want some further world-building thoughts on this version of Orions, you can find them in [the story notes](http://edenfalling.dreamwidth.org/523687.html) for [In Foreign Tongues (Been All Over You)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/192198), which _is_ actually a remix of MelayneSeahawk's [Talented Tongue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/301680). I guess you can think of "While We Live" as a prequel to that fic, if you like. It's also the backstory for [Shelter from the Storm](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1302745), which deals with Gaila and Uhura in the immediate aftermath of Vulcan's destruction.


End file.
